2. Contact Info

3. Dealer Selection

“Nice car,” says the guy next to me at the light. Never mind that he’s driving a Ford Shelby Mustang GT500 so new it doesn’t have plates yet, or that his car is faster than mine, handles better, and costs $22,000 less.

Such is the story of the new SMS 570 Challenger from Steve Saleen’s SMS Supercars. It gets attention everywhere it goes, from the gate guard at the racetrack to the stock boy at the pet store. Even if it weren’t sprayed in paint so green you’d swear it was actually radioactive, the custom fascias, big wheels, low-slung body, and hood-mounted butterfly valves get everyone’s attention long before you turn the key. When you do, anyone who hasn’t already turned in your direction will do so at the sound of the snarling exhaust and pronounced blower whine.

Yes, if you have aspirations of being the least bit subtle, the SMS 570 will dash them the moment it leaves your garage. The rumbling exhaust will set off car alarms. The paint job demands attention. The butterfly valves on the hood “wink at pretty girls,” as Steve Saleen himself put it, which would be far more sly and charming if the exhaust didn’t deafen them in the process. The valves are even technically functional, as they lead to a hole on the bottom of the hood just above the unboxed open-element filter resting where the stock airbox used to be.

So the SMS 570 is exceedingly good at being seen, and with a Dodge Challenger R/T as its foundation, it also makes a very good cruiser. Thanks to that SMS 296 supercharger under its showy hood, the 5.7-liter V-8 produces 500 horsepower and 500 pound-feet of torque on just 4 psi, more than enough to throw down at the stoplights as well. (As long as you don’t pull up next to a last-generation GT500.)

To make sure we had our figures straight, we tested the SMS 570 twice. You see, our first round of testing hit a snag or two. We quickly found that the car had an electronic limiter placed on it that cut fuel at 5500 RPM when redline was indicated at 6200 RPM. Doesn’t sound like much, but short-shifting costs time on zero-to-60 and quarter-mile runs. We would soon learn that the governor had been placed there because the engine had less than 1000 miles on it and wasn’t fully broken in. That didn’t, however, explain the troubles we had with the suspension and brakes. Handling tests revealed a problem with the car’s alignment, one so bad that the steering wheel wasn’t centered when driving straight. The brakes, meanwhile, produced a horrible shaking throughout the car in panic stops.

Disappointed with our results, we sent the car back to SMS for fine-tuning and returned to the track with it a week later. Miles were put on the car and the governor lifted, while some unnamed component of the front suspension was tightened. This time things should’ve been better.

And they were — to a point. The car returned to us with nearly 1800 miles on the odometer and inexplicably topped off with 100 octane fuel, despite not being tuned for it. Out at the track, low RPM launches were necessary to keep the big Pirelli P-Zero Rosso tires stuck to the pavement and the SMS 570 knocked 0.4 seconds off its previous zero-to-60 and quarter-mile times and added 3 mph in the quarter.

The result: 0-to-60 in 4.4 seconds and a standing quarter-mile in 12.8 seconds at 112.0 mph. Not bad on its own, but that’s still 0.3 seconds behind the stock GT500 to 60, and 0.4 seconds behind it in the quarter. It’s also only 0.4 seconds ahead of a stock Challenger SRT8 to 60 mph and 0.5 seconds faster in the quarter. It also stops in the exact same distance as the SRT8, and because SMS wasn’t able to replicate the shuddering under hard braking, it was still present, though less severe.

Handling tests were another story. Despite receiving the SMS S4 Ultra-High Performance suspension, the SMS 570’s handling wasn’t spectacular. In fact, with its 0.87g on the skid pad, it was significantly less grippy than a standard SRT8 we measured at 0.92g. The SMS did make up some ground in the Figure 8, where it posted a time of 25.9 seconds at 0.71 average g, two ticks slower than the SRT8’s 25.7-second lap at the exact same average g.

Unfortunately, the closer we looked, the more issues we found. While the lowered stance looks good, the cambered-in wheels look a bit goofy. What’s more, the Challenger’s ground clearance is significantly reduced, making every speed bump a hazard. The bigger problem, though, was a pair of exhaust clamps under the middle of the car pointed downward, further reducing ground clearance another inch and dragging on just about everything. As Saleen says, though, that’s an easy fix.

Another easy fix would be the panel gaps. The most noticeable ones were on the hood, where the driver’s side had enough space to fit a finger in and the passenger’s side could barely accommodate a sheet of paper. In the back, one side of the trunk lid stuck out half an inch past the body while the other was properly aligned. Just below that, the three elements of the tail lights were all out of alignment. More significantly, both the hood and trunk felt as though they weighed 50 lbs. each, and required two hands to open. Saleen says it’s a Dodge thing, because their SMS 302 Mustang doesn’t suffer that problem. A back-to-back comparison with our long-term Challenger R/T, however, showed that the stock Dodge displayed no such issues.

The trouble continued inside. Most bothersome was the gas pedal, which felt like trying to step through a trampoline. We wondered if the hood butterflies and the extra springs and cables had anything to do with that, but again Saleen says its Mustang exhibits no such symptoms and chocks it up to Dodge’s eccentricities. Here again, though, our stock Challenger suffers no similar issue.

Moving on, we found the custom seats to be overstuffed in the front, so much so that the right thigh bolster on the driver’s seat jammed up against the center console, thereby shoving it up into your thigh, which was rather uncomfortable. And while we found the hand-painted pinstripes on the doors and dash a nice dress-up, they were already flaking off after less than 2000 miles. Worse, the fake redline that someone cut out and taped on the tach face fell off during testing. Saleen explains that the car originally had the more powerful 6.1-liter engine, which revs higher, and the tach wasn’t changed out when the 5.7-liter engine was installed, but the tape apparently was. Finally, though our car’s build sheet specifies steering wheel stereo controls, our car had none.

As much as we want to like the SMS 570 Challenger, the devils in the details are turning us away, and we haven’t even told you the price yet. How does $75,456 grab you? That’s what our green tester ran with its $4775 Premium Electronics Package, $950 aftermarket sunroof (when Dodge offers a factory sun roof for the same price) and $1850 delivery fee. The MSRP without the add-ons? That’ll be $69,431 with delivery. Note that at more than $75,000, our car wasn’t even a fully loaded model, lacking HID headlights or push-button start among other features. Check all the options boxes and your car will hit a stunning $105,000, thanks in part to an optional $18,000 “show car” paint job. At that point, though, you might as well get the 700-horsepower SMS 570X, which starts at $94,306.

We like the SMS 570 Challenger as a car. It’s quick in a straight line, cruises comfortably, turns every head on the block, and sounds great. But for $70,000, there are a lot of other options for performance cars, many of which outperform this one and some for significantly less money. Chances are no one on your block will have an SMS 570, but perhaps there’s a reason for that.

0-60 MPH

EPA MPG

Horsepower

2010 Dodge Challenger News and Reviews

The Acura NSX and Ford GT may be the hottest new dream machines right now, but there are plenty of good sports cars that have never received their fair share of time in the spotlight. Maybe they don't pack the most horsepower or look aggressive enough, but enthusiasts know how well they drive. Here are some of the most underrated…

If you're a fan of American muscle in all its forms, then we've got the scoop for you. As promised, we rounded up all the coverage of the 2013 Hot Rod Power Tour, from the event's kickoff in Arlington, Texas, all the way to Chattanooga, Tennessee, on the way to the finale in Concord, North Carolina. Hot Rod Radio host…

It's the last stage of the last day of one of the most demanding endurance road races on the planet, and for the second time in an hour I'm looking over the dash of a nearly stock 2011 Dodge Challenger SRT8 392 hurtling past what appears to be an endless chasm. Six inches of crumbling roadway and a bent galvanized…

Road rallies are a special thing. They allow competitors to go out, no holds barred and race safely on public roads. One of the most spectacular would have to be Targa Newfoundland, which takes competitors through 2200 kilometers (about 1367 miles) of Canadian towns and back roads. Competitors from all over the world come to compete at Targa Newfoundland. This…